Healthy living in Rockford.

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For as long as I can remember, I have been a pretty physically active person. I have done lots of sports in my younger years. My parents always motivated me to play outside, and I loved doing that. I have done soccer, mountain biking, athletics, rowing, boxing and weight lifting. These days, I still love to go out and have a good jog. I’ve done so many sports that I can’t remember them all anymore. I had convinced myself that I had seen pretty much every single outdoor activity under the sun. But then one day I was browsing the web and all of a sudden I stumbled across an activity that was completely new to me.

Right away, I knew that I was going to try this one out. I am talking about hiking, a sport which has seen a big increase in popularity in the last few years. I simply love being out of the house. It’s strange that I had never been out in the mountains before. So I recently went on my very first hike and I was hooked right from the get go. Being out in the open is really good for you and I highly recommend this to everybody. Hiking has improved my life and I am sure that it can do the same for you. It has been a truly legendary experience and I can’t wait for my next hike. However, you’ve got to be careful not to strain yourself too much the first time. That’s what I did, and my plantar fasciitis started acting up again. If you have had any kind of foot problem in the past, then it is important that you buy the best hiking boots (see these, for example) you can afford in order to protect your feet from becoming injured.

If you are able to mitigate the risks of hiking, then you can expect to have loads of fun and you will also enjoy many health benefits. Hiking is the funnest way of working on your physical condition. It will lower your risk of dropping dead from a heart attack later on in life. You see, being out in nature decreases your blood sugar and your blood pressure. This is very beneficial to your overall health. But walking for a really long time, many days in a row, can become pretty exhausting. Anybody who has ever taken a walk outside for over an hour, must know the feeling. The exhaustion already sets in at the 1 hour mark and only continues to increase from there. You have got to be careful not to over exert yourself. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

Most people will not strain themselves until it becomes bad for them. Your common sense tells you when you have had enough. When your body is telling you that you have had enough, listen to it and take a rest. Then turn back. You will need to rest in between trail fragments anyway, because you are going to encounter lots of rough terrain and it will be very demanding from your muscles. This is especially true for overweight people, who will have to find suitable walking gear for good support. You are going to work out your entire posterior chain. This is the muscle group from your upper back all the way down to your legs. It truly is a total body workout that hiking will give you. Most people I know can’t even get a full body work out by hitting the gym multiple times per week.

Having a strong core is very important when you want to last on the trail. Check out the Boot Bomb site to read more about it. It’s run by a guy named Brian Bradshaw and he is an experienced hiker. There are plenty of ways to make your core muscle group stronger. There are plenty of machines in the gym that will allow you to train your core. But hiking itself can also do the job. It’s easily the most fun way, but you need to start out slowly and build up your stamina. The first time around, it’s much better to underdo it than overdo it. Start with a day hike and listen to your body’s response. If it turns ou you really like hiking, you could go for a hike every weekend. Start out with a very simple trail and work your way up to the rockier ones. If you have ever packed a few pounds to many around your waist, then you will see the pounds literally flying off your body once you start hiking. You are going to be thinner, healthier and you will see an improvement in your balance if you do it frequently enough.

Balance comes from having really good control over your muscles. Standing up vertically takes more muscle power than you can imagine. When you are going on a hike, you are pretty much training all the muscles in your body all at once. You’re going to become stronger and you will developer higher stamina. Make sure to buy a pair of the best hiking boots (here are some suggestions) that you can find on the web. Because if you do not have decent footwear, then you will certainly be disappointed by your first hike. I took my first hike on some old boots that a friend of mine still had lying around. But they are already pretty worn. I’m going to buy a much better pair for myself pretty soon.

The noble sport of hiking can also improve your mental health. People who hike experience more positive emotions and less negative ones. They do not become depressed as easily and simply have a better quality of life. So not only is hiking good for your physical health, it is also good for your mental health. I’ve spent plenty of time at the gym, but I’ve gotta tell ya… this is much more fun than the gym. Your worst hiking day will easier be more fun than your best gym day. I am really glad that I have discovered this sport and I wish I had discovered it sooner. I’m addicted for life now. I highly recommend that you take up hiking as well!

When you are working out at high intensity, and if you are like me, then you will probably want to use a little bit extra in your training to make sure you get more results. Have you ever gone to your local gym? Then you will probably realize that lifting heavy weights can be extremely demanding of the human body. The muscles and the joints in particular. You can sometimes take many days to recover from such a devastating ordeal as a simple weight lifting session.

The worst part of it all is that your recovery times go way up along with your advancing age. It is a good idea to visit the gym frequently if you intend to stay in good shape. But eventually you are going to grow older and you will become of middle age. Thankfully, there are things we can do to help ourselves age a bit more gracefully than mother nature had originally intended.

There is a website called the Bulk Board that I recently stumbled upon while doing some research. The URL is http://bulkboard.net. This website seemed to have a great deal of knowledge on this subject. There is a lot information on this website about all sorts of topics. This guy knows a lot about supplements such as protein powders and creatines and whatnot.

But he also knows a thing or two about testosterone levels and how to keep them high. This guy has a whole web page dedicated to informing you as well as he can with regards to testosterone boosters. He also has a review up on a particularly effective one called Testofuel.

This site may not be everybody’s cup of tea. But the one thing that I do know for sure… is that this website can really help you become a properly informed human being before you go off and do any heavy lifting at middle age. Since Barry Buchannon of the Bulk Board is himself of advanced age, these pages are mostly geared towards people of his own age and slightly below (middle aged men). But even if you are still young, it is a fascinating read. All you young guys out there reading this right now… you know for a fact that middle age is coming and you would do well to prepare for it. One day you are going to have a harder time lifting weights and recovering from it.

You’re not going to let yourself get all out of shape, are you? What choice do you have? If you respect yourself, you’ve got to stay in good shape. Get off the couch and get yourself into the gym already. You need to be lifting some iron. When you have children, then it would be a good idea to teach them about the many benefits of lifting heavy weights.

You will get far more out of life if only you have the guts to start lifting at an early age. When I was a kid, I used to be pretty fat. I clearly recall all the children from my school that made fun of me because I was fat and they were not. My very own parents for some reason kept feeding me all the wrong type of foods that were bad for you. They should have pushed a few more vegetables on me. But in their defense… I was a picky eater and did not like my veggies.

It is very important to get plenty of exercise in your life. You are not going to stay in good shape by simply taking walks and not doing anything else. That’s not entirely true, by the way. You could very well be an obese person. In that case, a walk is going to work a small miracle for you. I myself have first joined the gym when I was close to twenty. When I came out of puberty, I had completely had it with my own fat belly and I was also sick and tired of my own weak will. So I broke my weak will and turned it into a strong one. It took a lot of guts to enter that place for the first time in my life. I was fat and all the other people were in such great shape. In the end though, it was totally worth it and I do not regret anything.

The first gym that I entered all those years ago, had some really nice people. They really helped me out a great deal. They were very kind to me indeed. I was expecting them to be judgemental and make fun of me, just like the kids in school always used to do. But it turns out they supported me greatly and motivated me to try harder. If it had not been for those terribly nice guys at the gym, I would not have gotten the results that I had. In the first few months of my training, I was losing the most of my body fat. Because the more you have, the easier it is to burn. This guy at the gym became my coach and he put me through all sorts of training tests in order to track my results. He kept his eye on me for a good part of the first year and he was always giving me tips and hints on how to improve my form and get better results as a consequence. Had it not been for him, I would still have a big spare tire around my waist right up until this very day.

Most of my excess body fat went out the window in the first year because I had received such wonderful coaching. Now it’s almost 20 years later and I have children of my very own. They are now receiving the same support from me that I had received from my coach at the gym all those years ago. I want both me as well as my kids to stay in good shape for a long, long time. I want to have as many great experiences with them as I possible can.

Listen up all you guys out there. Especially all you middle aged guys. And especially the middle aged guys that are lifting weights! Time isn’t on our side. The trouble with being a man is that you will see dropping testosterone levels in your life. It can start as early as your thirties. But from your fourties and on, you will certainly have lower testosterone than you did when you were twenty. Testosterone is the male sex hormone that is not only required for burning fat and building muscle, but it is also required for just making you feel good. Many guys that are suffering from lower test levels are complaining that they have become irritable.

Men also require this hormone for building thick bones. You can suffer from loss of bone density if you do not have enough of this hormone. It will cause you a whole lot of unhealthy conditions if you don’t prevent this problem from getting out of hand. The worst that can happen to you is that you lose a big part of your sex drive, if not completely. And if there is anything worth protecting, than it has got to be your libido, right guys? So make sure to keep those test levels up!

You do not necessarily require supplements in order to keep your hormone levels at acceptable levels. There are plenty of foods you can eat to raise those t levels naturally. There is a big list of those kinds of foods, but I will only discuss a few of them in my first post. An ancient, wise Greek philospher and doctor once said… Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food. I believe he couldn’t have hammered the point home better if he wanted to. Because he’s right on the mark!

Without further ado… let’s have a look at some testosterone boosting foods.

Eggs

Not only do they taste great, but they are also packed with vitamin D. Vitamin D is known to be a big booster of testosterone levels. If you have a deficiency of this vitamin, then you are a lot more likely to have lowered levels of the male sex hormone.

But it also works the other way around. Clinical studies have found that men who have a higher uptake of vitamin D, also have higher test levels!

Red Meat

There’s a lot of healthy nutrients in red meat. A number of these are required for the natural synthesis of testosterone. Think of zinc, saturated fat and cholesterol to name a few.

I bet you thought all cholesterol was bad for you, right? Well, nothing could be more wrong than that. You need some of that stuff in order to get your body to promote the production of testosterone.

Cabbage, Broccoli and Cauliflower

Alright, so you already knew that vegetables are good for you. But these particlar ones are extremely high in a molecule known as DIM, or indole-3-carbinol. The DIM molecule is known to lower the aromatase enzyme’s activity. And that’s a good thing. Because high aromatase activity means lower test levels for you.

Aromatase turns testosterone into estrogen, which is the female sex hormone. As a man, you’ll want to keep your estrogen levels down to a bare minimum.

These vegetables are also high in fiber. That’s good for your weight control. And healthy weight loss also contributes to higher testosterone!